


Who's Screaming So Loud?

by yminnie



Series: Tear my heart out Ereri [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Death, Darkness, Death, Depression, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad, Shadows - Freeform, Titans, attack on titan - Freeform, dead Levi, ereri, humanities last hope, humanities strongest, shingeki no kyojin - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 13:51:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4609149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yminnie/pseuds/yminnie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Humanities Last Hope is hopeless, due to the actions of one Jean Kirstein.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who's Screaming So Loud?

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea why I did this. Levi is my favourite Attack On Titan character and I just have this thing where I have to put my characters through hell or worse. 
> 
> So if you take the time to read this, thank you. And please leave a review or kudos or anything, it's much appreciated.

“EREN!”

I was so close, so close to the shadows that I almost didn’t hear the voice calling to me. So forceful, so insistent, so utterly terrified, it makes me feel like I’d been punched in the stomach. I wrench my arm away from the dark spindly threads that had latched on. I must get to that voice. I rush towards it, using to last of my willpower to get to him. Because if I just get to him everything will be okay. We’ll get back behind the wall and everything will be fine. I’ll make his tea just the way he likes it, and he’ll yell at me just because he hasn’t found the right way to express his feelings. And I’ll be okay with that, because I know that he cares. I just need to get to him.

I force my eyes to open, only to see red. Why is everything red?

“Eren.”

His voice is weaker than the first time he called out. As if all his strength is slowly leaving him. I rush forward looking for the one face that I know will stand out amongst the red.

What a horrible colour. It’s too bright and sickly. The colour of blood, and I’ve seen too much of it in my lifetime, too much for any lifetime.

I’m almost there, almost to the voice that is slowly fading amongst the screams that surround me. Why is someone screaming? What’s happened? Just get to Levi, everything will be fine. Everything is going to be fine.

Would that person just quit yelling for one second, I can’t hear Levi.

“Fall back!” Someone shouts from behind me in the opposite direction to where I’m headed, but I can’t pinpoint their exact location. “And will someone shut Eren up; he’s going to bring a whole hoard done on us.”

Shut me up? What am I doing? Shouldn't they be focusing on getting the person with the piercing scream to shut up? At that my throat feels dry and overused. No it can’t be me screaming, I would know if it was. I clamp my mouth shut, and the noise ceases. So it was me, but why am I screaming? I can’t even see anything.

“Reiner grab him!” There’s that voice again.

I can feel a solid arm wrapping around me. No don’t, I haven’t gotten to him yet. I thrash and scratch at the person holding me, pulling me away from where I need to be, but they don’t budge, they don’t even flinch as if I were a child acting up. They can’t do this to me.

“Levi!” I shout, my voice breaking as I continue my struggle.

There’s no reply, not from anyone as the arm pulls me back in the direction I came from. I continue my futile escape plan until my arms and legs feel as though they are dead weights hanging off my body. My vision never returns and my mind follows soon afterwards, pulling me into complete darkness.

**~~.~~**

“Has anyone told him yet?”

What are they talking about? Told who what?

I force my eyes open, staring straight into a white light that momentarily blinds me. I close them again on instinct, shrinking away from the offensive light.

“Eren?”

I slowly open them again at the sound of my name, is that Levi?

“Levi?”

They grab my hand; their touch is almost too hot, scorching my skin as they hold on too tight.

“Eren? It’s Armin. How do you feel?” His voice is too strained to be anywhere close to comforting.

“Burning,” I mumble, my throat feels as if it’s been stuffed with cotton.

He says something to someone else in the room that I can’t make out. There’s only one thought on my mind.

“Levi,” I choke out, my voice straining.

There’s only whispering after that.

**~~.~~**

“There’s no point to anything anymore,” I scream at each of them, wanting to make them understand. “You think I want to go on living after this?”

They all stare at me with varying degrees of terror in their eyes; I’d do the same if I were them. If someone were to pick up a knife and go on about life having no meaning, I’d be scared of what they would do as well.

“You think that I would want to live in a world that he no longer exists in?” I’m being unreasonable and I know that, but I can’t make myself stop. I can’t think rationally, not now that he’s gone.

“Don’t you understand that I can’t do it? I can’t pretend like everything is okay, when it’s not. Don’t any of you understand that you’re not enough? None of you are worth anything.” I spit the words at them in disgust.

“Eren this isn’t helping anyone,” Jean bravely steps forward, saying the words as if I don’t already know that.

I tilt my head into an unnatural angle, sure that I looked crazed to all of them, and perhaps I am a bit. I point the knife towards him. “You think that I’m trying to help you? You’re the reason he’s dead. You’re the reason that Lev-,” my voice catches on his name, it’s the first time I’ve tried to say it since it was the first word out of my mouth when I woke up. “You’re the reason that he died.”

I take a step closer to Jean, pointing the knife right at his chest. “If you hadn’t decided to play hero then he wouldn’t have gone after you,” I take another step closer. “If you didn’t decide to go off on your own then he wouldn’t have tried to save you,” I take one final step so the point of the blade just touches the middle of his chest. “If you were never born, then he would still be alive.”

He physically gulps as I stare at him with murderous intent, his eyes wide with terror as he looks between my own eyes and the blade resting against him.

“Eren, I-,” He tries to speak, but I cut him of abruptly.

“Aren’t you lucky, Jean? The man you love it still alive and well,” I turn my gaze towards Marco standing off to the side his own eyes looking between Jean and the blade with horror. “Look at him standing there all in one piece.” My gaze turns back towards Jean. “Lucky you were there to save him, huh? Weren’t you just the hero?”

He doesn’t speak, and there’s only one thing I want to do. One thing I need to do. I need to thrust this knife straight through his chest, and I’m about to, my self-restraint is almost at its breaking point. My eyes flick back over towards Marco; I want to watch him as I end Jean’s life.

But a thought occurs to me, maybe I have this all the wrong way round, killing Jean wouldn’t make this any better, no no no. There would be no point to it.

I sense everyone physically relax as I lower the knife from Jean’s chest.

But if I kill Marco...

I’ve moved before anyone can react, moving swiftly across the room towards Marco, his eyes widening into huge orbs as I draw near, knife poised to strike. If I kill Marco instead, Jean will have lost the one thing that matters most to him.

Yes that’s what I’ll do.

I pounce on Marco with enough force to knock him onto his back; I straddle him the knife held in both hands above my head as I prepare to plunge it into his chest. His arms flail about as he tries to push me off, but I’m unmoving.

I look him right in the eye as I whisper, half crazed, “You can thank Jean for this.” Before I bring the knife down.

It’s almost all over when I feel the sharp pain on the back of my head, and I’m falling to the side the knife falling from my grasp. I hear the loud clink of it hitting the floor before by vision and mind is consumed with shadow.

**~~.~~**

“He’s no use to us like this.”

I know they’re talking about me; they always seem to be talking about me now. I can’t blame them; I’d talk about me to. I’m not sure if they consciously want to, but they’re determined to get their own jobs done at the cost of their emotions.

I wish I could do that to.

“Just give him some time.”

I know that voice. I’ve known it for so long, so why can’t I give it a face? Why does every face I see look the same?

Why does everyone look like him?

“He’s had enough time.”

There will never be enough seconds in a lifetime.

**~~.~~**

“Mikasa, don’t!”

I feel the sting on my cheek before the words have registered in my head. I try to lift my hand to my cheek, but my arm feels as heavy as lead, so I just sit still making no reaction what so ever to show that I notice anything outside of my own head. I want to say that it’s okay, that everything is fine, but I can hardly even say the words to myself.

“Did you really think that was going to do anything?”

That’s a different voice this time, they’re all starting to blur together a bit. If only I could get my eyes to see something, then I’d be able to tell who it was. Perhaps if I could get my mouth to move I could tell them to stop being so loud.

If only I could do something.

**~~.~~**

“How many times do I have to say I’m sorry until you forgive me?” Jean pleads from beside my bed.

I haven’t moved since god knows when, all I know is this bed, Mikasa constantly bringing me food that I don’t eat and Armin coming in to check on me. That’s my life.

This is my life without him.

I don’t look away from the spot on the far wall as I speak in an emotionless voice. “Until Levi comes back.”

I can see the pained look in his eyes without having to look at his face, that’s the only expression he’s worn since that day. He’s taken this harder than any of the others, his guilt is eating him alive. And so it should, he killed Levi. And everyone knows it. His punishment is to live with it.

“Eren, you know he’s not coming back.” His voice comes out as guilty as his face.

Yeah you would know, wouldn’t you? You saw to that personally.

I don’t even have the strength left to put any malice into my words, they come out broken and hopeless, just like everything since that day.

“Then shut up.”

**~~.~~**

“I don’t think I can take it anymore, Mikasa,” My voice is hoarse as I stare into her eyes. They remind me so much of his that I can’t look at them for more than a second.

She’s a constant living memory of everything that I’ve lost.

“Eren please don’t talk like that,” She pleads with me.

There’s nothing she can do for me. There’s nothing anybody can do.

“I don’t think I can hold the shadows back,” I whisper, staring just past her ear into the darkness of the room surrounding us. “And I don’t want to.”

“Eren, I swear to god if you keep talking like this,” Her voice firm, leaving no room for arguing.

She continues talking but her words blur together to the point where I can only see her lips move. She’s shaking me roughly, but she mays well have been rocking me to sleep.

That’s all I want to do.

Sleep.

Just like him.

**~~.~~**

What was the last thing I said to him?

What were we doing the last time I saw him happy?

The last time I saw him alive?

I’d like to think that it was something like ‘I love you’, but I doubt that it was. Sure we loved each other, but it was never as simple as that with us. Levi was always just that little bit too distance, finding it easier to show his emotions through touches that ranged from intimate to a slap on the back of the head. But I still knew even if he never said the words.

I can’t complain, I never said the words either, though they were on the tip of my tongue more times than not. Something always got in the way, but it was mostly me. I was the one who got in my own way, and I curse myself for that now. If only I’d said the words. Perhaps he never knew, maybe he needed to hear them from me to be sure that I wasn’t just some stupid teenager driven by my own lust. Maybe he thought that I just saw him as a forbidden fruit. And of course he was. But that didn’t stop me from having him.

The lights have been turned off and everyone has long since retired for the night. I can’t sleep, I won’t. My own dreams are the only things that scare me now.

I laugh into the darkness of my room, it’s harsh and humourless, echoing off the walls creating the illusion that everyone is laughing at my pathetic form. And I wouldn’t blame them if they were, Humanities Last Hope driven to a shaking vacant host due to the death of Humanities Strongest.

I laugh again, finding only dark humour in my thoughts. Humanities Strongest was killed due to the mistake of one Jean Kirstein. And Humanities Last Hope is hopeless.

Humanity’s pretty screwed then.

**~~.~~**

Why do people find the shadows so scary anyway?

I can’t think of any reason as to why they would be portrayed as being anywhere near sinister, not when they sound like him. Not when their outstretched fingers look just like his. He’s trying to reach out to me, trying to comfort me in a way only he can. Because he’s the only one who can help me now, and I will welcome his touch in any way I can get it.

I stretch out my hand, waiting for the moment our fingers intertwine once again; it’s been too long since I’ve felt his touch, too long since I’ve heard his voice.

As if on cue a voice breathes from the shadows.

“Eren.”

And that’s when I know, I know this is the right decision, because it’s Levi. And having him is the only thing I need.

So perhaps just this once I’ll allow the shadows to hold me.

Just once won’t be too bad, right?

After all it’s him.

**Author's Note:**

> Go and read the prequel 'Reluctant Heroes' up now.


End file.
